Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Public Enemies


A few weeks ago it was Jesse James, tonight it’s John Dillinger. Pick your scumbag. I know that movies creating semi-heroic myths about people who were, in reality, worthless, murdering pieces of shit can yield fantastic results, as in Bonnie and Clyde. But they are a hard sell to me. It helps if I don’t know too much about the criminal’s actual crimes; I knew nothing at all about Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker when I first saw that movie, nor about the human garbage called Billy the Kid when I saw Paul Newman in The Left Handed Gun (both movies by Arthur Penn). But beyond that, the movie must be compelling in some way other than (almost always wildly inaccurate) biography, and this movie has nothing to recommend it in that regard.